Charlotte’s stories always took awhile to tell because her words were slowed and spent by the late afternoon when we would see each other, as her day had started as early as mine. I would be out on the back steps, which led from Mrs. Haslam’s kitchen door down to the backyard, peeling potatoes or topping and tailing runner beans, when Charlotte would come by to deliver her bundles, each one wrapped in butcher paper. Charlotte rued that the paper was more costly than the laundry soap, but there was no way for her to skimp on the packaging. She said that if you pay to get your laundry done, then you want to believe that your garments have never touched anyone else’s.

“Same washtub,” she said.

“Same washtub,” I repeated, laughing low right along with her.

When I first knocked on Mrs. Haslam’s kitchen door, I knew that her house, despite needing a new coat of paint, was aiming for a better class of boarders. There were no laundry lines or poles in the backyard. That meant the boarders would have to send their laundry out, which was an added expense for them. I’d worked at houses where the boarders took their turns at the backyard pump and washtub and, worse, at houses where the boarders never did. You can tell a lot about a person once you’ve seen their laundry hanging out to dry. Moth holes, careless mends, cotton, flannel, or wool, they all tell you what a person chooses to keep closest to them. Most of the time, it’s what they have to keep closest to them because their choices in life are spent up or spent elsewhere.

Charlotte knew her numbers—one to ten, like I did—but she never learned her letters. None of us could, back then. So she drew a little picture for each of her customers at Mrs. Haslam’s and the other boardinghouses where she found work. The tag on Miss Caroline’s bundle had a snowflake drawn on it. Charlotte smiled when she showed it to me, and then she explained why. I’d been at Mrs. Haslam’s for about two years by then, and Miss Caroline had been there from the start. Still, I would have never guessed.